


searching for a trail to follow

by I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: (it's gonna be a slow burn), (kinda? maybe? they start out the story by trying to kill each other is what i'm trying to say here), Book: Eclipse, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, everyone deserves better and i'm going to give it to them, the author is dead and so is canon compliance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29443893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames/pseuds/I_reallyreally_hatemakingusernames
Summary: Jasper asks for help, and María answers. She is expecting it to be a little bittersweet, a lot frustrating. A battle that will be hard but very winnable, in the end. She is not expecting the wolves.
Relationships: Leah Clearwater/Maria, Past Maria/Jasper Hale
Kudos: 7





	searching for a trail to follow

**Author's Note:**

> for the incredible @su-angelvicioso, who inspires everything i write about maría, and makes the most amazing art of these two!!!  
> (also ignore me starting a new fic with the exact same premise as one i've been ignoring for months, i started that one from bella's perspective and it was not going well, lmaoooo)

This is a bad idea, and María knows it. 

Has known it since Charlotte looked her dead in the eyes and said _Jasper asked for you—_ Peter drifting behind her, running his fingers over all María‘s shining pans, the strings of ingredients whose scents almost made her believe she remembered a time she was human. Both of them pretending not to know how dangerous this was for all their fragile friendships—

This is an idea bad enough to hurt.

Bad enough that it _did_ hurt, just considering it. That it ached, as she paced the hallways of the little adobe house she built so far in the middle of nowhere that she could stand in the yard and shine, not fearing any consequence. She fought for that place, that vast tract of land and memories—she couldn't just walk away—

She is still fighting for it. Slower now, maybe, her reputation fierce enough that she can let soldiers live longer, train them harder, and on the defensive they will almost always win anyways—people fear her, when they attack, and that matters— _she_ matters—

And Jasper asked for her.

Needs her.

 _Wants_ her.

And _that’s_ a bad idea. Dangerous, because she let him go and she needs to keep it that way.

Because she was _happy_ , there on her hard-won land.

Maybe growing weary of the fighting. Maybe sometimes cracks shattered into her face that took days to seal, and she couldn’t stop tracing them, prying their fragile edges back open. Maybe sometimes her crescent scars hurt like brand-new bites, itching, _burning_. Maybe, maybe, maybe—

Maybe some days she wishes she could sleep because weariness starts to feel like a physical weight—

But she was happy, nonetheless. A hard happiness, one she scrambled and clawed for—

But she could run to supermarkets late at night, where fluorescent lights hummed and spat and a million colors danced in plastic on the shelves. She could buy meat and flour and little glass bottles of spices—stand in the kitchen she constructed so carefully, piecing together recipes she knows she knew when she was human, inhale the smells and imagine their tastes. She could bury her hands in her garden, in blazing color and gentle soil—and this she was certain of, that she had had an _abuela_ who bent over flowers that same careful way—

And it would make her feel warm, all of it. Deep in her bones, in her frozen veins—in a way she’d never imagined she could feel again.

She was even happy training, now, knowing instead of just killing. Trusting—carefully, and in pieces, but still trust.

Camila had been by her side for so many years now that María had stopped counting them—tall and irreverent and smiling even more fiercely than she fought, tossing out jokes just seldom enough that they surprised a laugh out of María every time—

And Jasper _asked for her_.

Jasper asked, and a quiet piece of her heart still aches for him, under the stars whose names she taught him—and she knows that’s a bad idea too. Knows and knows, and yet—

She’s still here. Running under trees eerily tall, not even a hint of the starlight to seep through their groaning branches. Knowing with every step closer to him that it’s a mistake.

And then she catches a scent, unfamiliar—heavy and warm and animal but _not_ , far, far too bitter—

And there is no time to know, no time even to think—

She hurls herself for the branches just a hair quicker than the fangs.


End file.
